Category: United States

TRACK | Guitar – Double Down

5/5 golden merles

“Double Down” is freshly forged Portland-based lo-fi garage and post-punk. A slightly disoriented rendition of what you’ve come to expect: the atoms scrambled up, the collider coughing up something new. The work is recoiling from structure and form a bit and thereby moving closer toward tone and feeling. It feels singular despite the common pallet. It unravels for a couple minutes before snapping back into a likeness for what you might favor.

The album didn’t immediately burrow into my skull on the first pass when I saw it come up at the esteemed and endlessly reliable tegosluchamPL. But a second pass as the closing track on onetwoxu.de‘s recent Verspannungskassette #40 finally got it through the thickness and had me excitedly searching “guitar” in google like a jackass for a bit.

What should rock music sound like in a geriatric oligarchy? It’s a tool, as always, but one of escape or commiseration? In Guitar’s self-titled you can have a bit of both. From where I sit —fleeing one price gouging to another, within a gauntlet of diseases, no prospects or future— it feels like a good approximation: the sound of disillusionment compounding. There are plenty of bits where the melody and traditional structure is subverted, detuned and driven off the cliff or into a pit. And ringing truer because of it. And with plenty of cohabitant reference points for footing. And the work is overall stronger for it, ending with this, the most approachable track, “double down.” In a class of them it would be voted most likely to succeed, but, in god’s name, at what? It is the most at ease with expectations and a great tune, bigger within the context of a really good set.

The cassette is out on Spared Flesh Records.

TRACK | EXXXON – CHEVRRON

5/5 golden merles

EXXXON’s DIESEL TAPE DB#22 is hardcore punk rock from Wyoming with titles that recontextualize the wrath. A culture becoming more accustomed to the naming of names is hopeful, and seemingly more willing to address systemic fault, to the extent that remains a possibility. And the rage is refreshing. And the reframing is welcome. Maybe we are entering a new era of mutually assured destruction and there should be an appropriate soundtrack for it.

The levels are blown up, charred and lacking in pretense. The production is expertly rendered within this context, keeping all the components uniquely salient despite their unity of purpose. There is always a great sense of motion and dread.

Most hardcore bands I was exposed to the inadequate sample-size of my youth were, when comprehensible, preoccupied with naval gazing. And while that has its place (the bit beneath the sternum), it is a relief to see something worth shouting about more explicitly incorporated. Something like, for instance, the world’s foremost profiteers in the decline of a habitable planet and their knowing immiseration of the species. The EP is attempting to rise to address the enormity of the problem. It is working within the available genre pallets and emotional gradients of conveying discontent. And seems to be approaching through that symbolism an almost appropriate level of panic and rage.

The early tapes are sold off, nestled all snug in their deck-beds. But the digital representation of the audible range remains available for you to Name Your Price.

TRACK | Cobra Man – Living in Hell

5/5 golden merles

“Living in Hell” is synth pop / electro-punk with a great sense of fantastical demiurge. It’s anthemic and apocalyptical, with a chorus that must redeem any perceived trespasses or misgivings punk purists might have about the synthesis of style. They’re expertly balancing a heightened humor and horror around two premier vocal performances, joyfully heralding our ongoing collapse.

In the dark times will there also be power disco? Can directly 80’s influenced music become self-aware and not have this result in the destruction of the world? Who cares. It’s a lot of fun. There’s a good mix of disco feinting at egg punk/devocore and all as a means to an end, all in the service of melody and evocation. Initially I was a bit put-off by the grandiosity and refinement. But it’s just too damn good. It rises to include those heightened elements while maintaining a palpable sense of impending dread that best embodies the cultural moment.

Spiritually a bit akin to recent p&p favorites LAFFF BOX, Cupid And The Stupids, –or any of the yolkier punks. The new 2022 Demos III from July are real exciting as well.

TRACK | Mo Troper – I Fall Into Her Arms

5/5 golden merles

Mo Troper is returned with another fully fledged set of lo-fi power pop aches. The warp is strong and the warble can be counted on with lead single “I Fall Into Her Arms.” It plumbs the murky depths of the duality of love, wherein the dichotomy of finding true acceptance is considered: now i’m not afraid to die / now i wanna stay alive.

Flame and fuzz provide the context. Timelessly, the plasticine vocal core glides above the static and soft room ambiance, imparting to me, subjectively, as a different human, a feeling of ambivalence despite the explicit text affixed above. The track delivers on capturing that particular sort of hopefulness and queasiness, the kind that comes from ever really considering anything at length, weighing the opportunity costs of the leap, and committing to the bit of existence. But also ultimately coming down on the side of the earnest and heartfelt as the only proper guide amidst the chaos and malaise.

The full document drops into our laps on the 2nd day of September and Violet/Violet swirl versions of the vinyl exist with some fun perks on the Lame-O Records storefront.

TRACK | Useless Eaters – Dungeon

5/5 golden merles

Regularly featuring on many The Net In The Sea mixes over the last decade, Useless Eaters are punk-noise rock royalty… that is if royalty status was established through a grinding and perpetual merit and not merely hereditary nonsense. They rip through the verses like a hungover langolier might, mighty and amorphous, eagerly resolved to annihilate.

The track is spatially aware of the soundscape in a manner that is rarely realized in the genre, a volley of cannon instead of one. In the thrashing it saliently utilizing the stereo mix amidst the core cacophony of other center-lane and assertive lo-fi attributes. It feels dynamic and so it is.

Kindly reminding me of this excellent track was onetwoxu.de featuring BLNDI with their also superb cover off a recent couple of demos. It recoups well the spirit and introduces its own invention amidst the translation. The original digital is €9.99 or the vinyl is listed for a few dollars more.

TRACK | Mesh – Ur Dead

5/5 golden merles

Art punk and garage rock from Philadelphia, pretty great and the amorphous sound of coddling a curse as it’s brought to fruition. Or a few of them. “Ur Dead” is in good company, a super strong set of clank and strum; vocals are traded, guitar tones are produced to an insultingly good state, a film of collateral detailing enveloping the fundamentals.

The track is about the days burnt up within the relative niche of ones life, leaning into the decline, time whiling toward an untimely and self-contained exit. But it’s all for the best, more or less, to the extent that any of it matters. Lots of good humor and shake, reminding a bit and fondly of The Rangoons and Scott and Charlene’s Wedding, if you’ve found comfort in their ilk.

For the price of $5 USD (or more) for digital or tapes from Chicago’s Born Yesterday Records.

TRACK | Wombo – Below The House

5/5 golden merles

Wombo’s Fairy Rust is one of my most anticipated records for awhile and the “Below the House” single is the well chosen/ideal entry. The staccato conversational admissions form the crux of the thing with the bass riff bubbling beneath, absorbing all the terrestrial elements; a nonabrasive and brightly melted solo closes the sequence, outsized, life-like.

From the start you feel a cache is built up with reserves of the flitting but determined melodic phrases, the simple accumulating into gentle grandiosity through the appropriate sequential consequences. Lots of unknowable but familiar components, plainly cryptic, recognizably indecipherable and the like.

Wombo are on tour and the vinyl’s out on Brooklyn’s Fire Talk Records, black or red for a buck more. It’s good sound to hear.

TRACK | 208 – Red Cat

5/5 golden merles

“Red Cat” has aggregated all the wasted clipping segments hacked off of more thoroughly manicured garage rock and built a monster of a track/album from them. The momentum built from it pouring from the speakers is a slipstream that makes your escape a little easier. It emulates well a live set at the last concert you ever properly hear.

Self-confessed audiophiles may hear an emaciated range but this is far from it. There is a rich pallet of combustion and deterioration, tonally frayed and saturated. The ideal is in keeping the contours of the collapse in tact, while deriving the implicit energy of its destruction. You can’t properly find the edge without going at least a bit over and it is refreshing to see people working in this territory while maintaining a bridge back to some familiar landmarks.

TRACK | Bleeding Rainbow – Underground

5/5 golden merles

From Pennsylvania-based noise makers Bleeding Rainbow‘s 2010 Prism Eyes EP, “Underground” is bright and radiant rock. Some unique genre contamination in the shoegaze and punk elements and structure, it’s a kind of modular pop chimera. With the aural vocal phrasing stacked in two lanes, the miscellany of influences are always serving foremost melody.

Frenetic, everything pushes constantly forward. There is a proactive panic that elides stagnation, rapidly circumnavigates the drudgery of taking a breath, or pause, or a moments silence. Every vowel is elongated to enwrap the line and seemingly also to cushion the final blow: who can direct us where to go / my mind’s made up / the answer’s ‘no.’

The internet promises that the Hozac discs still exist in the world, and some of which are gold.

TRACK | The Babies – Wild 2

5/5 golden merles

The Babies were a NY lo-fi rock super group of sorts (Kevin Morby/Woods, Cassie Ramone/Vivian Girls) and the two albums they released did not disappoint (2011 s/t and Our House on the Hill 2012). Solidly forged garage/pop rock focused on love, death, more death, and adventuring. There’s a real joyfulness to the morbidity married to it melody.

This morguementum carries on convincingly throughout on both the wild & mild sides. There’s seemingly a mutual respect in the making between members, every track features a couple compelling hooks, overflowing with enduring licks and brokered compartmentalization. Wild 2 is my favorite for the moment but it could be any featured on the first disc.

This should’ve been borderline infinitely earlier in the series (post a day for the first year [day 284], then whenever), it’s one of my favorite records without qualification. At least part of the delay was that I was hoping it might show back up on bandcamp. But no such luck so linking to some random yt video is the best we can do. It can still be acquired in the physical world, and should be.